Lesson 5.3.1

5.3.1 Rosenhan and contemporary clinical studies Quiz: Pearson Edexcel Psychology, Unit 5

20 questions

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Lesson 5.3.1, Rosenhan and contemporary clinical studies: 20 multiple choice questions for the Pearson Edexcel Psychology (9PS0), Unit 5: Clinical psychology, written with Revision Ninja.

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The 20 questions

  1. What was the main question Rosenhan (1973) investigated in On being sane in insane places?

    • Whether early attachment predicts adult relationships across a long period of development
    • Whether staff in psychiatric hospitals could tell sane people from people with mental disorders
    • Whether drug therapy cures schizophrenia faster than talking therapy in a controlled hospital trial
    • Whether children learn aggression by imitating adults who show aggressive behaviour in play

  2. How many pseudopatients took part in Rosenhan's first study?

    • One hundred and twelve
    • Twenty-five
    • Two
    • Eight

  3. What did the pseudopatients say they heard in order to gain admission?

    • Music playing from a radio in the waiting room
    • A voice shouting their own name from the corridor
    • A broadcast giving medical advice about diet
    • A voice saying words such as empty, hollow and thud

  4. After admission, how did the pseudopatients behave?

    • They refused all food and medication for the whole stay
    • They continued to hallucinate loudly on every ward
    • They attacked staff members to prove that they were ill
    • They behaved normally and said they no longer had symptoms

  5. What was the average length of stay for the pseudopatients in Rosenhan's first study?

    • About 19 days
    • About 90 days
    • About 3 days
    • About 1 year

  6. How did staff interpret the pseudopatients' note-taking?

    • As evidence that the patient was recovering from illness and taking an active part in care
    • As a symptom of their supposed illness, which was treated as pathological
    • As a harmless hobby with no clinical meaning, which staff simply tolerated on the ward
    • As good record-keeping by a conscientious patient who wanted an accurate account of the day

  7. On discharge, what diagnosis did pseudopatients typically receive?

    • Anorexia nervosa with a good prognosis
    • Autism spectrum disorder with no treatment plan
    • Schizophrenia in remission
    • Depression with no further treatment needed

  8. What does Rosenhan's study mainly suggest about psychiatric diagnosis?

    • Diagnosis is always accurate when carried out by trained staff
    • Diagnosis is unaffected by the setting in which it takes place
    • Diagnostic labels can dominate how staff interpret ordinary behaviour
    • Diagnosis depends only on the physical appearance of the patient

  9. Which aspect of validity do Rosenhan's findings most directly call into question?

    • The validity of psychiatric diagnosis, since sane people were judged to have a disorder
    • The internal reliability of a questionnaire used in the study to record the pseudopatients' symptoms
    • The ecological validity of a laboratory memory task that was used with the staff in the study
    • The test-retest reliability of the diagnostic manual when applied to the same patients twice

  10. Which ethical issue is most clearly raised by Rosenhan's study?

    • Use of animals in invasive experiments carried out in laboratories under licence from the state
    • Coercion of children into taking part in a study conducted in schools across the region
    • Deception of hospital staff and possible disruption to real patients' care
    • Invasion of privacy in online survey data collected from members of the public through forms

  11. Which research method best describes Rosenhan's first study?

    • Covert participant observation in a real institutional setting
    • A meta-analysis of published hospital records
    • A cross-sectional survey of attitudes to mental illness
    • A laboratory experiment with random allocation

  12. What did Rosenhan's follow-up study show when staff were told impostors would try to gain admission?

    • Staff correctly identified every impostor who was sent to the hospital during the follow-up period
    • No genuine patient was flagged by any member of staff during the whole follow-up period at all
    • Staff refused to admit anyone during the whole follow-up period, to avoid any risk of error
    • Staff flagged many genuine patients as likely impostors, showing errors in the opposite direction

  13. Which concept does Rosenhan's study most clearly illustrate?

    • The labelling effect, where a diagnosis shapes how behaviour is interpreted
    • Authoritarian personality, where individuals obey authority figures without question or doubt
    • Monotropy, where children form a single main attachment figure in the first year of life
    • Operant conditioning, where behaviour is shaped by rewards and punishments over time

  14. Why is it significant that the pseudopatients were not detected as impostors?

    • It proves that all patients in the hospitals were pretending to be ill for the whole study period
    • It suggests staff judgements depended on the label rather than on careful observation of behaviour
    • It demonstrates that deception is always undetectable in any setting, however careful the staff are
    • It shows that the hospitals had no need for diagnostic procedures because labels were enough

  15. Seven of eight pseudopatients were admitted with schizophrenia. What proportion is this?

    • 12.5 per cent
    • 75 per cent
    • 87.5 per cent
    • 93.8 per cent

  16. Why is a study conducted across twelve hospitals in several states useful?

    • It shows whether the effect generalises across settings rather than being specific to one hospital
    • It lets the study avoid collecting any data at all by relying on existing hospital records
    • It guarantees that the same staff member was involved at every one of the hospitals studied
    • It allows the researcher to avoid all ethical review by spreading the study across many sites

  17. Which is the strongest criticism of Rosenhan's study?

    • Its participants were not adults and so its findings cannot be generalised to any adult group
    • It involved too many hospitals to analyse statistically in a single study with one team
    • Its credibility has been questioned because some reported details cannot be fully verified
    • It used too many quantitative measures for a question that is essentially qualitative in nature

  18. What is a defensible argument in favour of Rosenhan's study?

    • It showed that patients are never affected by hospital environments in any measurable way
    • It proved conclusively that all psychiatric diagnosis is fraudulent and should be abolished
    • It raised important questions about diagnosis in real institutional settings that laboratory studies cannot address
    • It demonstrated that pseudopatients can always be identified by their accents and speech patterns

  19. If each of the eight pseudopatients stayed an average of 19 days, what is the total number of patient-days?

    • 168
    • 27
    • 114
    • 152

  20. Why is the labelling effect found by Rosenhan more concerning than a single diagnostic error?

    • It means that every patient in a hospital is given the same diagnosis, whatever their history
    • It reveals a systematic problem: once a label is applied, normal behaviour is reinterpreted, so errors can persist
    • It proves that labels have no effect on how patients are treated in the hospital wards
    • It shows that single errors are always corrected by the next doctor who sees the patient

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